Lansner: Putting pencil to traffic-jam costs

Our occasional tally of economic patterns ponders the ups and downs of traffic.

PLUS: The long-suffering South County toll roads got a dose of good news last year: Combined revenues hit an all-time high at $200 million.

That's likely a sign of economic oomph from the area's upper crust, folks who can afford what can be steep tolls to skip traffic jams. The toll roads — the 73 near the coast and the 241/261/133 in the foothills -— actually are drawing smaller crowds.

The roads had a combined 81 million trips last year, down a touch from 2011 and the fifth consecutive decline in usage since the peak in 2007 of 99 million trips.

It's my guess that job losses largely are to blame for the usage drop — as are flexible workplaces where folks can telecommute in various ways to cut down on driving.

So how did tollways revenues increase? A series of large toll hikes. Why? To help meet huge debt repayment burdens left from construction.

Last year's total toll take was up 6.3 percent in a year, the third consecutive annual gain. My trusty spreadsheet tells me that the toll roads revenue per trip — think of that as the typical toll — has increased 23 percent since the ridership peak of 2007.

That pricing burden — in tough economic times — sadly caps the toll roads' ability to help ease traffic burdens on the nearby freeways.

MINUS: Let's not forget pain at the pump.

Federal fuel watchers at the Energy Information Agency estimate that a typical American household spent a record $2,912 on gasoline last year.

That's a touch less than 4 percent of income before taxes. Minus 2008, that's the highest yearly slice of family budgets taken by fuel in three decades.

The energy agencyexplains that the jump in gasoline spending is a mixture of people driving more but in far more fuel-efficient vehicles. Pricier gas negates the gain from high-mileage cars.

Efficiency means that U.S. gas consumption hit a 10-year low in 2011 before rebounding slightly last year. But gas prices, by the agency's math for the nation, jumped 26 percent in 2011 and 3 percent last year.

By this math, those local snarls also translated to 27 extra gallons of gas being used in 2011.

All told, time and fuel waste in jams cost a SoCal driver $1,300 in 2011.

These costs have grown slowly after taking a sharp drop in the Great Recession.

In the economic boom of 2006, by Texas A&M math, SoCal commuters wasted 18 more hours stuck in congestion than they did in 2011. That boosted 2006's cost of snarl to $2,124 — or 63 percent higher than in 2011.